The sky was bleeding again.
A jagged tear stretched across the heavens, pulsing with silver fire. Where it dripped, the clouds caught flame.
Below, the blackened husks of towers stood like crooked teeth, watching the end draw closer — quiet, reverent, broken.
Beneath that dying sky walked a ghost.
Isaac Killoran moved without sound across the ruins, ash curling around his boots. His white coat, singed and stained, fluttered with each step. A black blindfold veiled his cursed eyes — not to protect him, but the world.
He didn't need sight. The air twisted for him. Shadows bent. Whispers trailed behind like a storm of souls.
He stopped at the edge of a shattered cathedral.
Bones littered the ground like petals. A sigil had been scrawled in dried blood — crude, rushed, but recent.
"Cultists," he muttered. No fear. No surprise. Just fact.
A flick of his wrist, and the Blade of Hollow Echoes formed — smoke and steel merging into a curved, black sword.
It didn't gleam. It pulsed, alive and whispering.
Then he stepped inside.
The cultists never had a chance.
They chanted in a language that didn't belong in mortal throats. Their skin was marked with spines, tumors, and eyes that didn't blink.
One turned toward him.
A mistake.
One second — breath.
Next second — blood.
Limbs fell. Eyes shriveled. A shadow passed through them like judgment incarnate.
Another tried to flee — met his eyes.
Even through the blindfold, Abyssal Gaze found its mark.
The man screamed silently. Then collapsed. Soul erased.
Isaac sheathed the blade slowly. "Messy," he muttered.
A voice crackled in his earpiece.
> "Report."
He tapped the communicator. "Crown cult. Purged. Third nest in this quadrant."
> "Any survivors?"
"No."
> "Understood. Return to Zone V. You're being reassigned."
Isaac scowled. "To what?"
> "Escort detail."
He hated that word. Detail.
It made murder sound like paperwork.
"And who," he asked coldly, "am I escorting?"
Silence.
Then—
> "Lucien Arclight."
He stood still.
The name hit like broken glass in his memory. Too bright. Too holy. Too righteous.
The son of the man who had captured him.
The boy who thought monsters could be caged.
"You're joking," Isaac said.
> "Orders are sealed. You'll meet him at the Skywall. Two hours."
The signal cut.
Ash blew through the cathedral. The dead whispered. Isaac stood alone in the silence.
Then he whispered back.
"Light burns fast."
And vanished.
*Meanwhile, beneath the light of the Skywall...*
The Skywall shimmered on the horizon — a wall of divine runes barely holding back the Hollowborn.
Lucien Arclight adjusted the strap of his white coat, the runes etched into it flickering faintly. His crystal blade pulsed at his side.
"Isaac Killoran…"
He exhaled.
"I don't care how many lives you've taken. If you're a threat to the last cities—I'll stop you."
He tightened his grip.
But deep down, he wasn't sure…
whether he meant to stop Isaac.
Or save him.